Lovely – order restored!

I love organising projects that take very little time to complete but make you feel oh-so-good as if they were a lot more complex than they actually were.

I’ve shared the fridge organising with you before; today I’m going to share another of my 10-minute projects, organising the pantry.

• throw out expired food like sauce packets, etc.
• move older food to the front and be sure to use them up in the next week
• use baskets and other containers to keep like categories of food together
• as easy as that, you are DONE!

When was the last time you organised your pantry?

Oh my word. Do you know what no internet does to me???? Makes me crazy.

We’ve been on holiday for the last week and thank God I delegated email to my virtual assistant just in case because there was absolutely NO SIGNAL up there.

There was one shopping centre with free wifi but after waiting for 20 minutes in the HEAT for the guy to show me how to connect to it (my laptop wasn’t showing that little icon and I’m a technophobe as you know), I left, still not knowing, because he was still busy with a customer. Grrr!

Of course that means I couldn’t blog yesterday so here we go, a day late

Remember we’re decluttering and organising in our KITCHENS this month and this week, we’re decluttering mugs and glasses.

This is your challenge to throw out any chipped or surplus mugs or glasses that you can’t use anywhere else.

(if you don’t want to post on the theme, go right ahead and post on whatever you felt like decluttering, or just show us how you store your mugs and glasses

Since I wasn’t home, I’ll show you some boxy t-shirts I unearthed and decluttered before our holiday.

Why do we think that unflattering clothes will hide our unsightly bits?!

Now tell me, did you declutter any mugs or glasses?

Have a look at the Organise your Home e-course and get your entire home organised in just 12 weeks.

Now for this week’s challenge

Please link to the post on your blog where you show off your pictures and talk about what you decluttered. If you don’t have a blog, tell me in the comments about ANYTHING you decluttered this week.

It can be anything – physical, electronic, mental clutter or even the need to be a certain way. Like perfectionism!

What did you declutter this week?

I love reading cooking and baking blogs and imagining eating all the delicious, mouth-watering food.

Anybody else?

Well, if you have good intentions as I do, those recipes and recipe books pile up very quickly and start to overwhelm you.

So I thought I’d share what works for me.

1. I only buy cookbooks that feature my specialties.
I don’t cook meat dishes very well; I don’t know why, I just don’t. I also don’t do cakes – that’s a personal preference because I’m too lazy impatient for mixing this, and mixing that.
I love cooking stir-fries, pasta dishes and muffins, though, so that’s where I focus my energies.

2. I learned to let go of my good intentions.
I am now coming to terms with reality and realize that I am never going to make a triple-layer chocolate cake even for my husband’s birthday. I also deleted all the free recipe books from my hard drive that I now know I’m never going to use, like 101 recipes using coffee.

3. I have a Word document called Blog recipes to try.
When I’m browsing blogs and see a recipe that is (a) easy, (b) looks yummy and (c) that I am likely to try, I copy and paste it into this document. Then when I’m doing my menu planning or I feel like trying out new recipes on the weekend, I quickly print it.
This cuts down on the paper clutter!!!

4. I have a limited space in my kitchen for non-kitchen stuff.
Between the cupboard and my microwave (see picture), that’s all the space I allow for recipe books, appliance manuals and my Household Organising File with blank menu plans, shopping lists, travel lists and so on..

The basket is also easy to carry to the TV when I need to declutter it every couple of months.

How do you keep on top of the recipe & recipe book clutter?

Start using the little bits of time that you DO have.

1. load or unload the dishwasher
2. if you do dishes by hand (like we do), pack the dishes away
3. pack lunches for the next day
4. write out your shopping list
5. wipe down your kitchen counters
6. sweep the floor
7. mop the floor
8. prepare the vegetables for supper tomorrow
9. tidy a cupboard
10. organise something

I often get asked, “how do you keep the kitchen counter neat, tidy and organised?”

A kitchen counter can get out of control very quickly because of all the different things happening, like children’s papers, meal preparation, cooking, homework/ crafting, shopping, etc.

Because of this, I don’t think you could ever just leave the kitchen and hope it would stay neat and organised!

However, here are a couple of tips to help you at least try:

1. have clearly designated areas for each activity

We have one little corner just as you enter our kitchen where we pack and unpack lunches, sort papers and so on.

The rest of my smallish kitchen is for meal preparation and cooking.

2. remove anything you don’t use on a daily or weekly basis

The more stuff you have on the counter, the more you have to clean and wipe down those appliances.

If you only use your slow cooker once a month, then store it in your pantry and enjoy all that wonderful counter space.

3. keep things where you use them

When your utensils are stored far from your stove and you have a lot of back and forth, that’s when your kitchen starts getting disorganised.

4. have a method of dealing with the paper

The more paper you throw away, the less you have to file Use a plastic drawer system and clearly label the drawers. Once you have this set up, there should only be paper on your counter for a maximum of 5 minutes a day (only while you’re sorting and checking you have all the notes from school, etc.).

This picture is from my study but I always suggest to clients with children that they have one of these in the kitchen and use a drawer per family member (mom and dad can also share a drawer).

5. maintain regularly

This will depend on how busy your kitchen is. When both of us are at home the whole day (like when we’re on holiday), I do a quick 5-minute tidy and wipe-down of the counters after each meal and also before I prepare supper.

For more help organising your kitchen (and the rest of your home), check out the Organise your Home e-course. If you register in the next 24 hours, you get to have all your questions answered on a 75-minute call with me. That’s a $147 value.

Edited to answer Tami’s question in the comments…
No, Tami, the picture is from my study. I don’t have space in my kitchen at all for paper, so I sort my paper as I walk in the door and throw the junk away right there and then.

The rest goes straight to my study where I put it in my in-tray (which lives on top of those drawers, incidentally )

I attend to my filing about once every week or two, depending on how much there is. Remember I’m ruthless about only keeping stuff I actually need, so there’s never very much.

I really do love baskets. Remember I blogged about it last week?

Here is part 1 in case you missed it.

This time, I’m showing more kitchen and pantry pictures.

this is in my pantry – the packages (red kidney beans if you’re interested) take up less space like this than if I lay them down
baking stuff and extra chocolate in the back that I got on sale
extra cleaning supplies
If you use baskets in your kitchen/ pantry area, please blog them and come leave the link in the comments so we can all come visit and see

This is also my Works for me Wednesday post – working smarter, not harder

2. to hold our vitamins (the front one has the daily stuff and the back one has all the extra supplies)

How do you use baskets in your kitchen?